Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Drill, Drill, Drill = Jobs, Jobs, Jobs in Pennsylvania

Marcellus Shale Coalition – "The Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry – like a host of news outlets across the region and the nation – continues to keep a watchful eye on the powerful job creation engine called the Marcellus Shale, the world’s second largest natural gas field behind one in Iran.

In its recent “Marcellus Shale: Fast Facts” employment overview, the Center for Workforce Information & Analysis – a research arm of the Dept. of Labor & Industry – demonstrates clearly, with new data, the Marcellus Shale’s sustained, growing and unmatched economic strength. In fact, according to this independent, government data, “The number of new hires across the Marcellus producing regions is nearly double in 2011Q1 than what it was in 2010Q1; indicating that while new employees continue to be hired, the rate is accelerating.”

"Nearly 48,000 people have been hired in the last year by industries related to drilling in the Marcellus Shale, and 71 percent of those people were Pennsylvania residents. Nine thousand of them were hired in the first three months of 2011. The average salary was higher than the statewide average. And the rate of hiring is accelerating."

MP: The chart above shows that while the overall employment level in the state is still more than 100,000 jobs below the pre-recession level, mining employment barely slowed at all during the recession. In the last eight years, mining jobs in Pennsylvania have almost doubled, and have increased by more than 36% in just the last two years.

5 Comments:

I spent last semester interning in a non-partisan research agency within the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, I can tell you a lot of people in the capital are very hesitant of the Marcellus Shale drilling. I must admit, I love the idea of job creation, but the science on the environmental impact of the drilling is as confusing as the science on climate change.

John Stossel has a good column on the issue (http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/05/gasland-powers-big-green-myth-making-about-fracking) but I am unsure if it is completely genuine.